Quite simply, there can be no chance of 'honest capitalism' while the incestuous 'lobbyist' status quo remains in place in our political halls of power. A system that virtually guarantees mutual back scratching and palm greasing can only have led to the system we have today.....in which the rich and powerful club together for mutual benefit while those of us out in the cold get screwed. How much worse could our governance possibly be without lobbyists? I suggest it would be way better, PERIOD.
The scapegoat ritual isn't an answer, either. There is no way to play evil games nicely. We are told to believe that there is, to protect those who perform the abuses that state formation necessarily entails.
Oligarchs will argue that you are violating their “free speech” when you try to limit the influence of lobbyists and political donations. At some point a serious conversation needs to happen about the corrupting influence of money in politics and no, this isn’t the same argument being made by the fake left to “moderate” online speech. There’s a huge difference between top down influence that effectively controls outcomes and bottom up free speech that is messy and can have unpredictable results. The will of the people can’t logically be construed as anti democratic but the concentration of wealth, power, and influence certainly is. Much like the separation of church and state there needs to be a separation of money and politics. I would take it a step further even and suggest that accumulation of wealth, beyond a certain point, is also corrosive to democracy. At a certain level, personal wealth moves from the sphere of the individual and their associated civil liberties and becomes a serious concern for the general public interest, much like the environmental effects of industry. Socialism gets propagandized as authoritarian communism by the uniparty but a certain degree of socialism is necessary for the preservation of democracy either through regulations, progressive taxation or both but political policy has been moving in the opposite direction for decades.
"People defend their rulers for the same reason cultists defend their cult leader: because they've been indoctrinated. And usually by the same psychological manipulation techniques."
I'm beginning to wonder if the manipulation techniques are starting to slip... I don't want to defend our rulers ever again. Down with the US imperialist cult!!
I don't think the manipulation techniques are slipping. All that's happened is that the rulers decided they needed the leftist-oriented part of the population to stop pretending to be rebels and become enthusiastic supporters, and the more conservative part of the population, with more nationalistic and capitalist ideals, who traditionally were the most patriotic fans of government, to be rejected and targeted for elimination. It was a massive swap of constituency that would be unbelievable had we not witnessed it. And the government all the while didn't change even a little bit. That's manipulation power of epic proportion.
I don't disagree with anything said here, but I have no hope that people world wide will be able to gain a global perspective, nor do I believe that governments will encourage that mindset. Interesting that if your background is in ecology one is not only interested in the survival and well being of the zoological and botanical species that reside, so to speak, in your own backyard, but your interest and concern operates on a global level. Not so when it comes to the human species. I also believe that there are too many and maybe most who are in the top eschelons of government, and in the business world that will sell their souls for money and power, and being nothing more then alpha chimps. I know it all sounds negative, but I for one have seen nothing else.
Actually they are something less than alpha chimps--they're sociopaths, which means they can be highly intelligent, effective manipulators, with zero concern for the common good.
I think those in positions of power that take us into wars, wars based on lies and motivated solely by choice for political power, while knowing hundreds of thousands, if not millions will die, or sit back like Obama, the Drone Warrior, and know you will kill many innocents, yeah there is something really wrong with your heart and your head.
How many cultures have reconciled our competitive, violent neuro-socio-biological behavioral program with the one that is care-giving and cooperative? How large were they and how long did they last? I can think of 2 or 3 that evolved under special conditions. But in general we default to supremacy and violence in pursuit of "survival". We default to violence, over-consumption and tyranny because we have dominant predatory nervous systems. It's not a political, moral, religious or intellectual problem we face. It's a neurobiological and sociobiological dilemma; a predator paradox. Words are no antidote. Fears' subconscious inertia weaponizes them to empower Alpha manipulators and their criminal accomplices. War trumps wisdom routinely.
Good to remember our closest living relatives are chimps, not bonobos that kiss a lot. Chimps are very territorial and prone to violence, especially those alpha chimps. Well, perhaps in the beginning with small tribes just trying to get a meal together there was less need for a a hierarchy and things could be more equatable. However once society develops complexity it probably looses all sense of equity.
All cultures reconcile the necessary abuses of their formation by coding them as care. Religious rhetoric only takes us further away from understanding that's how all states work.
"We" don't default to objectifying other people because of "survival". Every time some landlord in an altered state comes up with an imaginary obsession to chase, the same story and its accompanying murder machine unfold yet again. If anything, "we" act with violence because "we" are led to believe that some abstract property is more important than life.
Original sin narratives can and should always be rejected out of hand as an attempt to dominate.
"We" ARE natural born dominators, some more than others. "We" are also natural born lovers (some more than others). It's an organic, animal thing, regulated by hormones. The "original sin" of predatory, self-centered domination and violence is tragic, because it is largely unconscious and interferes with community cohesion without extraordinary cultural regulation. Lovers really have their hands full.
That's all cope for your little capitalist game. Other societies have other cope. In any case it's just an excuse for a class system. You should read more anthropology and zero fiction.
I would say the first step toward moral politics is to fix the money. It is no accident that the world has been in perpetual wars ever since the beginning of the 20th century when England moved heavily to fiat currency to fund WWI and the US created the Federal Reserve Bank. Countries used to need gold and silver and impose taxes or borrow to finance their wars. Now, they just print it up out of thin air. Funding war is far too easy.
The US did not create the Federal Reserve Bank. The Rothschilds and associates, based in London, created the Federal Reserve Bank, and a grossly-corrupt, treasonous US government enabled the coup.
But yes, with immoral money as we have, morality and justice are not possible. Our monetary system is legalized theft and robbery. Real money must be a part of any real solution.
There is no such thing as real money. It's still a childish value system celebrating exchange for its own sake. If anything, we would be better served by eliminating money and going back to tally sticks.
The foundation for the Federal Reserve System was laid out by a cartel of mostly bankers who secretly met on Jekyll Island in 1910. (The book "The Creature from Jekyll Island" tells the entire story.) The Federal Reserve Act was passed by Congress in 1913. I don't necessarily doubt that the Rothschilds had a hand in the creation of the Bank of England, and that their influence was present at Jekyll Island in the form of Senator Aldrich, but I'm sticking to what is more or less established historical fact.
But all that is something of a distraction from the main point which is that central banking and fractional reserve banking based on issuing massive amounts of debt with legalized counterfeit money is foundational to the corruption of everything downstream, ultimately leading to all manner of evils, not the least of which is never ending war.
I'm well aware of Griffin's book; read it more than 25 years ago.
Everyone at those Jekyll Island meetings were associates of, and subordinate to, the Rothschilds. Nathan Rothschild was already the banker to the individual states long before the Revolutionary War, and after. The Rothschilds were "THE power behind the Bank of the United States", the national bank that preceded the Federal Reserve Bank, quoting Griffin. He states (p331) "... the Creature from Jekyll Island is descended from a species that is NOT native to this land."
Not intending to argue with you. Just offering an expanded understanding, because thinking 'the US' created it is missing the real history.
"Since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.[...]
When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being
conquered. [...]
A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
I disagree with nothing in this post, but want to focus on the way a government, culture, cult or ruling class controls the narrative and proagandizes the citizenry. I came across a narrative awhile back that talked about memes, meaning units of cultural information in the way the genes are units of genetic information. Which means they're vague--genes don't have a set number of nucleotides or codons, and memes can be a new buzzword or the Catholic church. But they survive by protecting themselves. So belief systems often block the exits for believers. Examples are the notion in many sects of Christianity that doubting the faith is a moral crime, and in Scientology that psychology and its practioners are an evil enemy (which blocks the exits because this cult draws on people with mental health issues; so the exit might." be marked by the thought: "Maybe I should try talking to a therapist." And the American empire is seeking to block the exit by rigging it with the notion that to question the latest warmongering narrative is to be an agent of the Kremlin, a Chinese dupe, or whatever. But this didn't use to work on the Left!
Well said Caitlin! Reading the part you wrote about the ruling class doing everything possible to stamp out ANY worker lead class warfare movement reminded me of the latest casualty, Peru. Frustrating to see US Imperialism claim another scalp.
You are right on so many points. The liberals who condemn the right, dare not condemn imperialism. The reason they do not condemn this evil is because so many Americans benefit from it. It is not because they are stupid although they need to be ignorant of the consequences of their their lives. In America half of the employed citizens do not provide the necessities of survival as a living which necessitates the master nation exploiting the land and labor of other nations. This nation produces little of the necessities, and when this condition exists the only way our nation can keeps its non productive ways is through violence and threats of violence. We tear the middle east apart partly to keep oil cheap, and keep Africa divided because divided subject nations is easier to control. The only way of stop the ugliness of imperialism is when the productive people organize as a class for itself meaning we organize our own collectives where no one gets paid to organize us for that is when the existence of class starts.
The US is driven by a neocon agenda seeking world wide hegemony. It's what motivated our many middle eastern wars initially pushed by neocon Cheney, a primary signatory on the Project for a new American Century. Initially they said all they needed to move forward with their agenda was a new Pearl Harbor and they got that in the 9/11 attack. Hard to believe that some people don't see the US assisted coup in Ukraine as part of that agenda, and it's intent is to bring Russia down.
That's one of its intents. Another very important one was to stop the Nordstream II pipeline and ideally the Nordstream I, so as to open up markets for more expensive gas and oil from the US and maybe also Norway and Poland.
The neo con agenda is part of the problem for sure, but the liberals need the neo cons, and the neo cons need the liberals. The left and right are part of the same thing--elite class society. Two wings on the same bird. Only the productive people have no need for either aspect. or for an elite Problem is we do not realize it yet, so most of us look to one side or the other for solutions to our problems. Imperialism is a high form of evil, and yet so many here just look the other way. Their silence gives both right and left their consent. Imperialist nations are more democratic than subject nations who are usually ruled by dictatorship. In America only half of its citizens do productive labor, while the other half manipulate people as a way of life, So to feed, clothe, provide shelter and medical care for our citizens, we need to subjugate the land and labor of other nations--whether it be Iraq, or Syria. Imperialism is born out of a need, and that need is determined by a people where the regard for those who manipulate others is higher than those who provide the necessities.
Well, the neocons slipped over to the democrats during Trump's term in office. On Biden's team, is Fuck the EU Nuland whose husband, Robert Kagan, is a very influential neocon, and Blinken is right out there in plain sight with others behind the scenes. The have pushed our many wars since 9/11 and as they said they only needed a New Pearl Harbor to carry it out, and they got that with 9/11. They were behind our many middle eastern wars, Cheney and Jeff Bush are primary signatories on the Project for a New American Century. Notice countries like Turkey and Saudi Arabia had nothing to fear since they are in our camp, but to hell with Iraq Syria, Lyia, Iran, etc. Their agenda which has become America's agenda is to seek world dominance. Russia will be a long drawn out war and we will use Ukrainian lives as will Zelensky to try to bring Russia down. The coup in 2014 under Obama gave them a good head start, and I truly believe if Clinton had won in 2016 this war would have started during her administration. Jeffery Sachs also gives a very good account of where the neocons are taking us. I agree that both parties service the wealthiest among us, and the reason, the 1% controls 40 percent of America's wealth. Citizens united allowed corporations to be defined as people and they were then able to contribute as much as they wanted, which just made our elected leaders more beholden to their needs. I was always a registered democrat, but at times didn't vote, or voted 3rd party, now they can go to hell, or are they already there?
“The least likely outcome for humanity's future is that we continue along the same trajectory we've been on without having to drastically change ourselves and our behavior. That is the least likely thing to happen. We're headed for massive changes fairly soon, one way or another.”
That. Right there.
Truth can shine a light, but it can be dark, too. Very dark.
I respect your passion, and your call for basic morality, Caitlin. The US is indeed the leading purveyor of violence, oppression, robbery, and outright murder in the world, by far. Virtually every war that's ongoing, and almost every war on the planet over the past century, has the US as an instigator. And the public is so in denial that the word 'denial' just doesn't suffice.
Your description of the pervasive propaganda is accurate as well. You know the propaganda is at the level of DaVinci when the people of the world's hegemon warmonger state think there's no propaganda.
But that longtime, pervasive propaganda has shaped how we view the political spectrum (views of what is 'left' and what is 'right'), how we view 'free markets' and 'capitalism', and how we view 'democracy', 'socialism', or 'communism'. And the propaganda has shaped the history we learn and have free access to, to shape those aforementioned things. History books are written by the victors, which has always been us, and therefore we know the history that's needed to perpetuate violence and oppression.
One of the pillars of the propaganda that shapes our culture is that of collectivism. It's the ideology that the 'interests' of the collective are superior to the individual, and therefore on any issue, the minority has no rights. Whatever is deemed best for the 'collective' is the law, and those who don't agree are coerced, or even killed. We call it democracy, socialism, fascism, or communism, with the only difference being how it's decided what groups prevail and what groups get steamrolled. Any which way, it's all based on systemic oppression of minorities and the doctrine of 'might makes right', with 'might' simply being political power.
So there's quite a contradiction in your piece, because the 'left' is collectivism by definition. Collectivism is how tyrants justify tyranny to the masses, and it's become the modern American religion. It's all about coercion and violence, and while pretending there's no coercion or violence. It's no coincidence that as Americans have embraced collectivist propaganda, all over the world we've become more oppressive and violent. We're simply exporting collectivism; we have the political power to impose our will, so minorities everywhere had better obey.
So whomever is genuinely facing the violence their culture is perpetrating had better also be facing that leftist in the mirror, or they're still living by the propaganda, and fake.
The bottom line is that if we are to avoid going down in flames as a nation, we had better be willing to look at ALL of the ways we've been conned into embracing violence and oppression, not just the most obvious manifestation that is war.
That's just Christian "unity" painted as a spooky enemy.
Protestant cultures have a tendency to project their own shadows onto others and beat the other to vicariously purify themselves. This so-called collectivism you decry is a capitalist ideology operating in exactly such a fashion. It's a story to make us think scarce things such as elites are sources of value. Lazy fops made it up so that we wouldn't act effectively against their self-entitled takings and their ability to keep doing it without punishment.
All to deflect from capitalism's actual, mostly unspoken core values being subordination thwarted by contest.
Thank you. You've perfectly parroted the propaganda. You grotesquely twist the idea of a person owning their own farm and thereby living free into some imagined evil. Nobody should be free so that 'elites' are somehow restrained? The collective is enlightened and doesn't resort to the same brutality as 'elites'? Right.
You show that you don't know what capitalism is. You know what the 'elites' have programmed into you, and you argue for your own servitude.
Every historian and sociologist knows that capitalism displaced the Calvinist homestead culture to which you are praying right now, and it happened so smoothly over a long enough period of time that nobody ever needed to stop and question anything. "Leaders" today are making the exact same character attributions then as now about how their system could not fail, only be failed. Wokeness, today, is just another form of incorporeal private property.
In the other corner, we have a Protestant presenting his myths and feelings as facts, and throwing in some LARPy crusade drama between two imaginary friends for good measure. The historical record shows exactly where you got all this from, and in many cases watched you do it. I'll be the first to admit the medievals actually got more things right than moderns as far as philosophy, but to take the liberal philosophy of individualism as a god to be served is kind of disappointing.
Again you show that you have no idea what capitalism is. To you it's a fantasy about how an economy is corrupted, so that you don't have to look at the truth of it beyond the propaganda that obviously appeals to you. "Every historian and sociologist..." blah blah. Right, just like 'every doctor knows the jabs are safe & effective'. You're continuing to demonstrate my point about the propaganda forming the narrative.
Isn't that exactly the reverse of the narrative you were trying to sell everyone about the ebil collectivism? Lol. You have been trying to recite a Billy Graham myth of capitalism as some kind of revealed wisdom from Jehovah Himself, rather than a particular historical process situated in place and time. The priest projects his tiny little cosmos onto those who have no use for it, once again. If your capitalism is a religion, I ought to have freedom from it.
Doctors aren't saying any such thing, except 1. to protect their professional standing among their leading peers, and, well, peer pressure is what societies with common property do, or 2. reflecting their exposure to a well-curated professional and lay literature on the topic (sponsored by Pfizer) and not disposed to investigate further. Political and narrative managers _are_ funding low-quality studies on vitamin I, droning "safe and effective" from the rooftops, though, and I ignored them too. Perhaps you are projecting onto others _your_ need to receive mythical wisdom, _your_ need to vicariously participate in something inherently meaningless.
I'll concede that history is in some measure a process of narrative management, but the written record is easy enough to verify for one with the language skills. I'm not invoking any expertise whose methods I could not perform on my own. We have so many of these old books scanned online. Many are in English. Some are searchable and indexed. If these historical records don't say what it is thought they say, it would have been noticed by some upstart looking to make a name in the field. But, crickets.
But what really concerns me is that, because I won't simply submit to your made-up "truth," you naïvely imagine that I must put my faith in "the other one". I suppose there is some mythical American political play-pretend behind that assumption? Frankly I think pietism is one of the national character defects, and that political parties should be banned entirely under racketeering laws, same as any other church that enters politics, and top-down government replaced with council democracy, so better complain about the state of the imaginary moral football game to someone who believes the tournament or the sport should exist.
Well, no, capitalism has nothing to do with Billy Graham or any "historical process". I see why you're so confused. Capitalism is actually just 'private ownership of the means of production', meaning any person can run a private business, and unproductive grifters aren't allowed to rob them, whether those grifters be a king or a collectivist mob. It's simply about liberty, that horrific concept that leftists despise. That's why you'll write pages of blather intentionally misrepresenting what capitalism actually is, because you and all collectivists never just tell the truth, which is that you feel that you need to steal from productive people, because becoming capable and productive yourself would be too difficult. Forming a mob and creating a stealing system is so much easier. You and the 'elites' that you pretend to oppose are exactly the same, and partners. You'll deny it I'm sure, but it's out in the open now.
10 principles of propaganda - from the book Falsehood in Wartime, by Belgian historian Anne Morelli, and taken from writings by Lord Ponsonby, who was describing the role of media in Europe, prior to WWI...
1. We do not want war.
2. The other side is solely responsible for the war.
3. The enemy has the face of the devil.
4. It is a noble cause that we defend and not particular interests.
5. The enemy commits atrocities knowingly; if we make unfortunate mistakes, it is involuntary.
6. The enemy uses unauthorized weapons.
7. We suffer very few losses, while the losses of the enemy are enormous.
8. Artists and intellectuals support our cause.
9. Our cause has a sacred nature.
10. Those who question our statements are traitors.
When legality of action is replaced by morality of it. And we know that from the two, only one can be universally accepted.
Caitlin, I am a big, longtime fan. I strongly endorse your views on imperial propaganda and the need to oppose imperial war, etc. But when it comes to the problems enabled by wokeness I think you're missing the point.
What you call “wokeness” is crushing women’s rights, gay rights, democratic rights and children’s health. Together, this has a devastating affect on working class solidarity. The right is only opposing wokeness opportunistically, because the left has vacated the entire lane to them. If the left spoke up with a principled, unified voice, the right would not be able to use anti-wokeness as a trojan horse for their other issues and the oppression that wokeness enables would be snatched from the arsenal of the ruling class. Misunderstanding this is a really, really big self own.
A big part of the failure of what is now called "the left" is not only propaganda, but very poor quality education and indoctrination.
In a reaction to the cultural, political and intellectual uprising of the 60's, the Right has both dismantled the public schools and - via control of the curriculum and suppression of all critical thought and learning - used them as an institution of indoctrination.
Very few of those born after 1970 have any grasp of history and fewer still read.
The Powell Memo lays of the corporate right wing strategy that drove all this.
Quite simply, there can be no chance of 'honest capitalism' while the incestuous 'lobbyist' status quo remains in place in our political halls of power. A system that virtually guarantees mutual back scratching and palm greasing can only have led to the system we have today.....in which the rich and powerful club together for mutual benefit while those of us out in the cold get screwed. How much worse could our governance possibly be without lobbyists? I suggest it would be way better, PERIOD.
The scapegoat ritual isn't an answer, either. There is no way to play evil games nicely. We are told to believe that there is, to protect those who perform the abuses that state formation necessarily entails.
Oligarchs will argue that you are violating their “free speech” when you try to limit the influence of lobbyists and political donations. At some point a serious conversation needs to happen about the corrupting influence of money in politics and no, this isn’t the same argument being made by the fake left to “moderate” online speech. There’s a huge difference between top down influence that effectively controls outcomes and bottom up free speech that is messy and can have unpredictable results. The will of the people can’t logically be construed as anti democratic but the concentration of wealth, power, and influence certainly is. Much like the separation of church and state there needs to be a separation of money and politics. I would take it a step further even and suggest that accumulation of wealth, beyond a certain point, is also corrosive to democracy. At a certain level, personal wealth moves from the sphere of the individual and their associated civil liberties and becomes a serious concern for the general public interest, much like the environmental effects of industry. Socialism gets propagandized as authoritarian communism by the uniparty but a certain degree of socialism is necessary for the preservation of democracy either through regulations, progressive taxation or both but political policy has been moving in the opposite direction for decades.
"People defend their rulers for the same reason cultists defend their cult leader: because they've been indoctrinated. And usually by the same psychological manipulation techniques."
I'm beginning to wonder if the manipulation techniques are starting to slip... I don't want to defend our rulers ever again. Down with the US imperialist cult!!
I don't think the manipulation techniques are slipping. All that's happened is that the rulers decided they needed the leftist-oriented part of the population to stop pretending to be rebels and become enthusiastic supporters, and the more conservative part of the population, with more nationalistic and capitalist ideals, who traditionally were the most patriotic fans of government, to be rejected and targeted for elimination. It was a massive swap of constituency that would be unbelievable had we not witnessed it. And the government all the while didn't change even a little bit. That's manipulation power of epic proportion.
I don't disagree with anything said here, but I have no hope that people world wide will be able to gain a global perspective, nor do I believe that governments will encourage that mindset. Interesting that if your background is in ecology one is not only interested in the survival and well being of the zoological and botanical species that reside, so to speak, in your own backyard, but your interest and concern operates on a global level. Not so when it comes to the human species. I also believe that there are too many and maybe most who are in the top eschelons of government, and in the business world that will sell their souls for money and power, and being nothing more then alpha chimps. I know it all sounds negative, but I for one have seen nothing else.
Actually they are something less than alpha chimps--they're sociopaths, which means they can be highly intelligent, effective manipulators, with zero concern for the common good.
I think those in positions of power that take us into wars, wars based on lies and motivated solely by choice for political power, while knowing hundreds of thousands, if not millions will die, or sit back like Obama, the Drone Warrior, and know you will kill many innocents, yeah there is something really wrong with your heart and your head.
"All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force." ~George Orwell
How many cultures have reconciled our competitive, violent neuro-socio-biological behavioral program with the one that is care-giving and cooperative? How large were they and how long did they last? I can think of 2 or 3 that evolved under special conditions. But in general we default to supremacy and violence in pursuit of "survival". We default to violence, over-consumption and tyranny because we have dominant predatory nervous systems. It's not a political, moral, religious or intellectual problem we face. It's a neurobiological and sociobiological dilemma; a predator paradox. Words are no antidote. Fears' subconscious inertia weaponizes them to empower Alpha manipulators and their criminal accomplices. War trumps wisdom routinely.
Good to remember our closest living relatives are chimps, not bonobos that kiss a lot. Chimps are very territorial and prone to violence, especially those alpha chimps. Well, perhaps in the beginning with small tribes just trying to get a meal together there was less need for a a hierarchy and things could be more equatable. However once society develops complexity it probably looses all sense of equity.
The Iron Law Of Oligarchy wins in the end. That doesn't mean that we must stand idly by.
All cultures reconcile the necessary abuses of their formation by coding them as care. Religious rhetoric only takes us further away from understanding that's how all states work.
"We" don't default to objectifying other people because of "survival". Every time some landlord in an altered state comes up with an imaginary obsession to chase, the same story and its accompanying murder machine unfold yet again. If anything, "we" act with violence because "we" are led to believe that some abstract property is more important than life.
Original sin narratives can and should always be rejected out of hand as an attempt to dominate.
"We" ARE natural born dominators, some more than others. "We" are also natural born lovers (some more than others). It's an organic, animal thing, regulated by hormones. The "original sin" of predatory, self-centered domination and violence is tragic, because it is largely unconscious and interferes with community cohesion without extraordinary cultural regulation. Lovers really have their hands full.
That's all cope for your little capitalist game. Other societies have other cope. In any case it's just an excuse for a class system. You should read more anthropology and zero fiction.
I would say the first step toward moral politics is to fix the money. It is no accident that the world has been in perpetual wars ever since the beginning of the 20th century when England moved heavily to fiat currency to fund WWI and the US created the Federal Reserve Bank. Countries used to need gold and silver and impose taxes or borrow to finance their wars. Now, they just print it up out of thin air. Funding war is far too easy.
The US did not create the Federal Reserve Bank. The Rothschilds and associates, based in London, created the Federal Reserve Bank, and a grossly-corrupt, treasonous US government enabled the coup.
But yes, with immoral money as we have, morality and justice are not possible. Our monetary system is legalized theft and robbery. Real money must be a part of any real solution.
There is no such thing as real money. It's still a childish value system celebrating exchange for its own sake. If anything, we would be better served by eliminating money and going back to tally sticks.
The foundation for the Federal Reserve System was laid out by a cartel of mostly bankers who secretly met on Jekyll Island in 1910. (The book "The Creature from Jekyll Island" tells the entire story.) The Federal Reserve Act was passed by Congress in 1913. I don't necessarily doubt that the Rothschilds had a hand in the creation of the Bank of England, and that their influence was present at Jekyll Island in the form of Senator Aldrich, but I'm sticking to what is more or less established historical fact.
But all that is something of a distraction from the main point which is that central banking and fractional reserve banking based on issuing massive amounts of debt with legalized counterfeit money is foundational to the corruption of everything downstream, ultimately leading to all manner of evils, not the least of which is never ending war.
I'm well aware of Griffin's book; read it more than 25 years ago.
Everyone at those Jekyll Island meetings were associates of, and subordinate to, the Rothschilds. Nathan Rothschild was already the banker to the individual states long before the Revolutionary War, and after. The Rothschilds were "THE power behind the Bank of the United States", the national bank that preceded the Federal Reserve Bank, quoting Griffin. He states (p331) "... the Creature from Jekyll Island is descended from a species that is NOT native to this land."
Not intending to argue with you. Just offering an expanded understanding, because thinking 'the US' created it is missing the real history.
Since we're playing childish games with numbers and tokens, a better idea would be to make it impossible to trade food for the means of production.
Correct, and well said.
This is why they killed him:
"Since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.[...]
When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being
conquered. [...]
A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr (Beyond Vietnam, 1967)
https://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/courses/phil100/17.%20MLK%20Beyond%20Vietnam.pdf
We didn't listen and we are now spiritually dead.
I disagree with nothing in this post, but want to focus on the way a government, culture, cult or ruling class controls the narrative and proagandizes the citizenry. I came across a narrative awhile back that talked about memes, meaning units of cultural information in the way the genes are units of genetic information. Which means they're vague--genes don't have a set number of nucleotides or codons, and memes can be a new buzzword or the Catholic church. But they survive by protecting themselves. So belief systems often block the exits for believers. Examples are the notion in many sects of Christianity that doubting the faith is a moral crime, and in Scientology that psychology and its practioners are an evil enemy (which blocks the exits because this cult draws on people with mental health issues; so the exit might." be marked by the thought: "Maybe I should try talking to a therapist." And the American empire is seeking to block the exit by rigging it with the notion that to question the latest warmongering narrative is to be an agent of the Kremlin, a Chinese dupe, or whatever. But this didn't use to work on the Left!
Well said Caitlin! Reading the part you wrote about the ruling class doing everything possible to stamp out ANY worker lead class warfare movement reminded me of the latest casualty, Peru. Frustrating to see US Imperialism claim another scalp.
You are right on so many points. The liberals who condemn the right, dare not condemn imperialism. The reason they do not condemn this evil is because so many Americans benefit from it. It is not because they are stupid although they need to be ignorant of the consequences of their their lives. In America half of the employed citizens do not provide the necessities of survival as a living which necessitates the master nation exploiting the land and labor of other nations. This nation produces little of the necessities, and when this condition exists the only way our nation can keeps its non productive ways is through violence and threats of violence. We tear the middle east apart partly to keep oil cheap, and keep Africa divided because divided subject nations is easier to control. The only way of stop the ugliness of imperialism is when the productive people organize as a class for itself meaning we organize our own collectives where no one gets paid to organize us for that is when the existence of class starts.
The US is driven by a neocon agenda seeking world wide hegemony. It's what motivated our many middle eastern wars initially pushed by neocon Cheney, a primary signatory on the Project for a new American Century. Initially they said all they needed to move forward with their agenda was a new Pearl Harbor and they got that in the 9/11 attack. Hard to believe that some people don't see the US assisted coup in Ukraine as part of that agenda, and it's intent is to bring Russia down.
That's one of its intents. Another very important one was to stop the Nordstream II pipeline and ideally the Nordstream I, so as to open up markets for more expensive gas and oil from the US and maybe also Norway and Poland.
The neo con agenda is part of the problem for sure, but the liberals need the neo cons, and the neo cons need the liberals. The left and right are part of the same thing--elite class society. Two wings on the same bird. Only the productive people have no need for either aspect. or for an elite Problem is we do not realize it yet, so most of us look to one side or the other for solutions to our problems. Imperialism is a high form of evil, and yet so many here just look the other way. Their silence gives both right and left their consent. Imperialist nations are more democratic than subject nations who are usually ruled by dictatorship. In America only half of its citizens do productive labor, while the other half manipulate people as a way of life, So to feed, clothe, provide shelter and medical care for our citizens, we need to subjugate the land and labor of other nations--whether it be Iraq, or Syria. Imperialism is born out of a need, and that need is determined by a people where the regard for those who manipulate others is higher than those who provide the necessities.
Well, the neocons slipped over to the democrats during Trump's term in office. On Biden's team, is Fuck the EU Nuland whose husband, Robert Kagan, is a very influential neocon, and Blinken is right out there in plain sight with others behind the scenes. The have pushed our many wars since 9/11 and as they said they only needed a New Pearl Harbor to carry it out, and they got that with 9/11. They were behind our many middle eastern wars, Cheney and Jeff Bush are primary signatories on the Project for a New American Century. Notice countries like Turkey and Saudi Arabia had nothing to fear since they are in our camp, but to hell with Iraq Syria, Lyia, Iran, etc. Their agenda which has become America's agenda is to seek world dominance. Russia will be a long drawn out war and we will use Ukrainian lives as will Zelensky to try to bring Russia down. The coup in 2014 under Obama gave them a good head start, and I truly believe if Clinton had won in 2016 this war would have started during her administration. Jeffery Sachs also gives a very good account of where the neocons are taking us. I agree that both parties service the wealthiest among us, and the reason, the 1% controls 40 percent of America's wealth. Citizens united allowed corporations to be defined as people and they were then able to contribute as much as they wanted, which just made our elected leaders more beholden to their needs. I was always a registered democrat, but at times didn't vote, or voted 3rd party, now they can go to hell, or are they already there?
Bravo!
“The least likely outcome for humanity's future is that we continue along the same trajectory we've been on without having to drastically change ourselves and our behavior. That is the least likely thing to happen. We're headed for massive changes fairly soon, one way or another.”
That. Right there.
Truth can shine a light, but it can be dark, too. Very dark.
I respect your passion, and your call for basic morality, Caitlin. The US is indeed the leading purveyor of violence, oppression, robbery, and outright murder in the world, by far. Virtually every war that's ongoing, and almost every war on the planet over the past century, has the US as an instigator. And the public is so in denial that the word 'denial' just doesn't suffice.
Your description of the pervasive propaganda is accurate as well. You know the propaganda is at the level of DaVinci when the people of the world's hegemon warmonger state think there's no propaganda.
But that longtime, pervasive propaganda has shaped how we view the political spectrum (views of what is 'left' and what is 'right'), how we view 'free markets' and 'capitalism', and how we view 'democracy', 'socialism', or 'communism'. And the propaganda has shaped the history we learn and have free access to, to shape those aforementioned things. History books are written by the victors, which has always been us, and therefore we know the history that's needed to perpetuate violence and oppression.
One of the pillars of the propaganda that shapes our culture is that of collectivism. It's the ideology that the 'interests' of the collective are superior to the individual, and therefore on any issue, the minority has no rights. Whatever is deemed best for the 'collective' is the law, and those who don't agree are coerced, or even killed. We call it democracy, socialism, fascism, or communism, with the only difference being how it's decided what groups prevail and what groups get steamrolled. Any which way, it's all based on systemic oppression of minorities and the doctrine of 'might makes right', with 'might' simply being political power.
So there's quite a contradiction in your piece, because the 'left' is collectivism by definition. Collectivism is how tyrants justify tyranny to the masses, and it's become the modern American religion. It's all about coercion and violence, and while pretending there's no coercion or violence. It's no coincidence that as Americans have embraced collectivist propaganda, all over the world we've become more oppressive and violent. We're simply exporting collectivism; we have the political power to impose our will, so minorities everywhere had better obey.
So whomever is genuinely facing the violence their culture is perpetrating had better also be facing that leftist in the mirror, or they're still living by the propaganda, and fake.
The bottom line is that if we are to avoid going down in flames as a nation, we had better be willing to look at ALL of the ways we've been conned into embracing violence and oppression, not just the most obvious manifestation that is war.
That's just Christian "unity" painted as a spooky enemy.
Protestant cultures have a tendency to project their own shadows onto others and beat the other to vicariously purify themselves. This so-called collectivism you decry is a capitalist ideology operating in exactly such a fashion. It's a story to make us think scarce things such as elites are sources of value. Lazy fops made it up so that we wouldn't act effectively against their self-entitled takings and their ability to keep doing it without punishment.
All to deflect from capitalism's actual, mostly unspoken core values being subordination thwarted by contest.
Thank you. You've perfectly parroted the propaganda. You grotesquely twist the idea of a person owning their own farm and thereby living free into some imagined evil. Nobody should be free so that 'elites' are somehow restrained? The collective is enlightened and doesn't resort to the same brutality as 'elites'? Right.
You show that you don't know what capitalism is. You know what the 'elites' have programmed into you, and you argue for your own servitude.
Every historian and sociologist knows that capitalism displaced the Calvinist homestead culture to which you are praying right now, and it happened so smoothly over a long enough period of time that nobody ever needed to stop and question anything. "Leaders" today are making the exact same character attributions then as now about how their system could not fail, only be failed. Wokeness, today, is just another form of incorporeal private property.
In the other corner, we have a Protestant presenting his myths and feelings as facts, and throwing in some LARPy crusade drama between two imaginary friends for good measure. The historical record shows exactly where you got all this from, and in many cases watched you do it. I'll be the first to admit the medievals actually got more things right than moderns as far as philosophy, but to take the liberal philosophy of individualism as a god to be served is kind of disappointing.
https://davidgraeber.org/articles/manners-deference-and-private-property-or-elements-for-a-general-theory-of-hierarchy/
How much of your income comes from selling myths, fictions, "truths", whatever you would like to call your perjuries against material reality?
Again you show that you have no idea what capitalism is. To you it's a fantasy about how an economy is corrupted, so that you don't have to look at the truth of it beyond the propaganda that obviously appeals to you. "Every historian and sociologist..." blah blah. Right, just like 'every doctor knows the jabs are safe & effective'. You're continuing to demonstrate my point about the propaganda forming the narrative.
Isn't that exactly the reverse of the narrative you were trying to sell everyone about the ebil collectivism? Lol. You have been trying to recite a Billy Graham myth of capitalism as some kind of revealed wisdom from Jehovah Himself, rather than a particular historical process situated in place and time. The priest projects his tiny little cosmos onto those who have no use for it, once again. If your capitalism is a religion, I ought to have freedom from it.
Doctors aren't saying any such thing, except 1. to protect their professional standing among their leading peers, and, well, peer pressure is what societies with common property do, or 2. reflecting their exposure to a well-curated professional and lay literature on the topic (sponsored by Pfizer) and not disposed to investigate further. Political and narrative managers _are_ funding low-quality studies on vitamin I, droning "safe and effective" from the rooftops, though, and I ignored them too. Perhaps you are projecting onto others _your_ need to receive mythical wisdom, _your_ need to vicariously participate in something inherently meaningless.
I'll concede that history is in some measure a process of narrative management, but the written record is easy enough to verify for one with the language skills. I'm not invoking any expertise whose methods I could not perform on my own. We have so many of these old books scanned online. Many are in English. Some are searchable and indexed. If these historical records don't say what it is thought they say, it would have been noticed by some upstart looking to make a name in the field. But, crickets.
But what really concerns me is that, because I won't simply submit to your made-up "truth," you naïvely imagine that I must put my faith in "the other one". I suppose there is some mythical American political play-pretend behind that assumption? Frankly I think pietism is one of the national character defects, and that political parties should be banned entirely under racketeering laws, same as any other church that enters politics, and top-down government replaced with council democracy, so better complain about the state of the imaginary moral football game to someone who believes the tournament or the sport should exist.
Well, no, capitalism has nothing to do with Billy Graham or any "historical process". I see why you're so confused. Capitalism is actually just 'private ownership of the means of production', meaning any person can run a private business, and unproductive grifters aren't allowed to rob them, whether those grifters be a king or a collectivist mob. It's simply about liberty, that horrific concept that leftists despise. That's why you'll write pages of blather intentionally misrepresenting what capitalism actually is, because you and all collectivists never just tell the truth, which is that you feel that you need to steal from productive people, because becoming capable and productive yourself would be too difficult. Forming a mob and creating a stealing system is so much easier. You and the 'elites' that you pretend to oppose are exactly the same, and partners. You'll deny it I'm sure, but it's out in the open now.
10 principles of propaganda - from the book Falsehood in Wartime, by Belgian historian Anne Morelli, and taken from writings by Lord Ponsonby, who was describing the role of media in Europe, prior to WWI...
1. We do not want war.
2. The other side is solely responsible for the war.
3. The enemy has the face of the devil.
4. It is a noble cause that we defend and not particular interests.
5. The enemy commits atrocities knowingly; if we make unfortunate mistakes, it is involuntary.
6. The enemy uses unauthorized weapons.
7. We suffer very few losses, while the losses of the enemy are enormous.
8. Artists and intellectuals support our cause.
9. Our cause has a sacred nature.
10. Those who question our statements are traitors.
When legality of action is replaced by morality of it. And we know that from the two, only one can be universally accepted.
Caitlin, I am a big, longtime fan. I strongly endorse your views on imperial propaganda and the need to oppose imperial war, etc. But when it comes to the problems enabled by wokeness I think you're missing the point.
What you call “wokeness” is crushing women’s rights, gay rights, democratic rights and children’s health. Together, this has a devastating affect on working class solidarity. The right is only opposing wokeness opportunistically, because the left has vacated the entire lane to them. If the left spoke up with a principled, unified voice, the right would not be able to use anti-wokeness as a trojan horse for their other issues and the oppression that wokeness enables would be snatched from the arsenal of the ruling class. Misunderstanding this is a really, really big self own.
For more see https://brucelesnick.substack.com/p/with-gender-ideology-the-left-is
A big part of the failure of what is now called "the left" is not only propaganda, but very poor quality education and indoctrination.
In a reaction to the cultural, political and intellectual uprising of the 60's, the Right has both dismantled the public schools and - via control of the curriculum and suppression of all critical thought and learning - used them as an institution of indoctrination.
Very few of those born after 1970 have any grasp of history and fewer still read.
The Powell Memo lays of the corporate right wing strategy that drove all this.